Joyo Voodoo Octave bypass

[littlethoughts]

Hi All,

After seeing all the fuss about Joyo lately I decided to take the plunge and try them out. I bought the voodoo octave and it sounds pretty good - a nice musical fuzz and nasal octave. However, I've found the bypassed signal to be really obviously attenuated, with a lot less treble and generally duller sounding. I've never noticed tone suck anywhere near as bad as this with any other pedal - I like biting, treble heavy single coil sounds so it's a bit of a dealbreaker. Has anyone else had similar problems with the same pedal or other Joyo pedals?

[bigdawg]

not had anything like this with any of my joyo pedals (three on my board) - I did read somewhere there is a an octave mod as one of the capacitors was put in back to front but don't know what effect this had on the pedal.

[ICBM]

Since the Joyo pedals are true bypass, either the bypass switch is faulty, or whatever comes after the Joyo is loading the signal heavily.

[littlethoughts]

I have tried a/b'ing it with various pedals straight into the amp and the same problem is there so I don't think there is anything wrong with the signal chain. Maybe there is something up with the switch or the circuit then. I'll have a search for the capacitor mod.

[ICBM]

Don't bother, it's the switch. The whole point of true bypass is that when the pedal is bypassed, the signal does not pass through any component in the effect circuit.

It sounds like the switch is failing to disconnect either the circuit input or the output, which is then acting as a heavy load on the signal path.

I'm going from memory here, but is the switch mounted on a PCB? If so it could be a trace printing error or a stray bit of soldering bridging the switch terminals.

[littlethoughts]

I think you were right on the money there ICBM, the switch pcb looked a bit sloppy so I reflowed the solder for the contacts. The other possible cause was that the battery clip was in contact with the switch terminals and was rather wedged in. I've taped it out of the way now and it sounds much better in bypass. Now that weight is off my mind, I might check out the rest of the range...

[Jaded]

I've been looking at these over the last week or so. How does the fuzz handle bigger chords?

[littlethoughts]

It's good, the octave obviously prefers single notes but you can get some gnarly tones out of it. First fuzz pedal mind so I dont have much to compare it with. I just wanted to get a cheap one to see if I'd actually use it over regular drives.

[Bingefeller]

I don't know why you guys waste your money on these Joyo pedals. There's been a number of threads with people having problems. Get a proper octave fuzz and you'll hear the difference in quality.

[ICBM]

I don't know why you guys waste your money on these Joyo pedals. There's been a number of threads with people having problems. Get a proper octave fuzz and you'll hear the difference in quality.

To be fair, many of the problems are caused by the 3PDT true-bypass switches, which is a fault shared by many expensive boutique pedals as well - as well as mid-priced "better quality" pedals - and at least they're easier to change on a Joyo because they're PCB-mounted... compared to the Fulltones I've had to change switches on which were a total nightmare.

I do agree though, they seem like fantastic value for money until you compare them with better pedals - there must be something in the component choices and possibly small circuit changes that makes them sound different. The vid Sir Axeman posted comparing a Joyo Vintage Overdrive to an Ibanez TS-9 was very interesting - the Joyo was clearly in the same ballpark, but the Ibanez just plain sounded better.